


Expat: A Poetry Collection

by annie000expatriated



Category: Original Work
Genre: American Politics, Americana, Americans, Canada, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28786350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annie000expatriated/pseuds/annie000expatriated
Summary: A collection of poems by a former American who expatriated to Canada. Focuses on trauma, history, and current events around 2020/ 2021.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3





	Expat: A Poetry Collection

**Gloves**

$$$

I see you where you stand

And nothing else looks real

The weight of your red hands

On my shoulders, when I kneel

$$$

My back, a battlefield

Where you claimed victory

A thousand miles away…

And there’s nothing else I see.

$$$

I stumbled to a safehouse

With your bootprint on my brain

Now I’m sitting in a garden…

Yet it still remains

$$$

Your red boots crushed my mother

And her mother, and before

In the battle for profit

We’re the casualties of war.

$$$

**Worthy**

===

When the volcano 

Ashed Pompeii

Somewhere, a woman

Was away

Sailed home

Across the sea…

Then asked herself

“Am I worthy?”

===

She fell to her knees

Among ashes and bones

Volcanic remnants 

Of her former home

Only by chance

Did she remain

And she remembered

Her every shame.

===

“Better people

Than I’ll ever be…

Died in a fire

And I am free.

My unclean hands

I wash once more…

And I am _nothing._

A common whore.”

===

She screamed to the ashes

She struck at the air

She begged for answers

But the gods weren’t there

The volcano was silent

It was dirt and stone

Just like the remnants 

Of all she had known.

===

“Please absolve me

Of my crimes.

The wreckage I

Have left behind....”

Another traveller

Asked her why

She was asking questions

Of the sky.

===

“It won’t tell you

If you’re worthy.

Turn around,

And please, ask me.

Find someone to love

And ask it of them.

Then your new life

Will truly begin.”

**Custody**

%%%

The States are divorcing 

From themselves 

Due to irreconcilable differences 

Between propaganda and facts.

%%%

Custody battles 

On the world stage

China got industry,

South Korea, the arts.

%%%

Germany, the role

Of world leadership.

Canada is learning how to live

Next door to a burning house.

**Inter-generational** **Trauma**

>>>

Our ancestors are the furnace

We are the clay

>>>

After we dry

We beg and pray

>>>

To shape the kids

In a better way.

  
  


**PTSD in Quarantine**

...

I'm trapped in my house 

And they're trapped in my head

An army of monsters

Under my bed

Fighting with voices 

I hear on the news

Are the echoes of people

I couldn't refuse.

...

A storm doesn't hear you

Nor does a plague 

You can't reason with it

Or bargain or beg.

Just like a parent 

Who tells you your thoughts

Or the empty shelves

When it's all been bought.

...

Cover your mouth

And open your eyes

Keep the radio tuned

For tomorrow's surprise...

While I dream of a day

That is normal and free

Or at least as much

As I'm able to be.

  
  
  


**Of the Estranged Father, Who Loved Shakespeare:**

\\\\\

I sat with my anger long enough, until she told me her real name was grief.

\- -Anonymous 

\\\\\

ANGER

\\\\\

You saw Hamlet in the mirror,

A philosopher of angst.

Haunted by a father

Who was dead.

\\\\\

Yet behaved as a man

Who walks about

With a set of scales

Inside his head.

\\\\\

You balanced, leveraged,

Gained compliance 

In your way,

Favor for favor.

\\\\\

Had I been diabetic,

You would have 

Held my insulin

Hostage for good behavior.

\\\\\

You saw Hamlet in the mirror,

But you were Shylock.

Then stated this was 

A habit finished, done.

\\\\\

If I beheld your headstone, 

I would write upon it:

"How shalt thou hope for mercy, 

Rendering none?"

\\\\\  
  


GRIEF

\\\\\

And yet, Shylock, remember...

When Jessica fled away

With penniless Lorenzo

To seek a brighter day

\\\\\

She stood at her safe harbor

And stared out at the sea

She held the ring she took from you

Even now, that she was free.

\\\\\

Like Jessica, I may whisper

Words you'll never hear

Now that you are beyond her

She can release her fear.

\\\\\

She can show her weakness,

Now that she's beyond your measure

I can admit I loved you...

Because you can't use it for leverage.

  
  
  


**PTSD Checklist**

???

Doctor says, exaggerated startle response?

I jump out of my skin so often, I'm surprised I still have skin left.

???

Doctor says, intrusive thoughts about the past?

Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of 1998.

???

Doctor says, nightmares?

If my dreams had a director, it would be Rob Zombie. On good nights I can transition into Quentin Tarantino.

???

Doctor says, do you avoid things that trigger you?

I have to. When we last approached the American border, I started to dry heave until it came out both ends.

???

Doctor says, how do you cope?

By making fun of myself, obviously. Is it working? 

  
  


**Nancy, Estranged Grandmother:**

===

An Amish man with a pacemaker.

An anti vaxxer with a flu shot.

And you.

===

The very fact that you exist

Proves your ideas bunk

It's true.

===

If we were made of vibrations

If karma was a thing,

You'd die.

===

If thoughts were magic, your steps

Would turn the soil to ash,

Your hands burn like lye.

===

If thoughts had power to form

You would be wet coal dust

With a gaping red maw.

===

But this is a material world, so you 

Are an apple-cheeked matriarch.

But, in time, I saw.

===

You protected one pedophile, married another

And gave birth to a third.

There's no saging that away.

===

You wear California tie dye

But West Virginia is in your mind

To stay.

  
  
  


**Professional**

@@@

She is an edge

Sharp bones beneath skin

Ice knife eyes

The blade slides in

With a glance she cuts through

All of your dreams

You only pass

For a human being.

@@@

You wrap her burger,

Brew her coffee or tea

Thinking of two different 

Levels of free

She gets to buy you

And you get to say

What you’ll buy

For a snack that day.

  
  
  


**Danny**

###

I was born in a Dragon's Den

I was four when the Dragon brought you in

But I don't think you would play her games

And I thought she'd burned you in her flames

###

When you disappeared I couldn't say

A word if I was going to live another day

So I locked you up in a box in my mind

Until that Dragon was far behind

###

Now I know that you still live

Other Dragons screamed at me to forgive

Or at least if you are buried

It's not by the Dragon who gave birth to me

###

The foster system is America's shame

I laid flowers on the grave with no last name

A grave I made with a rock and a pen

When I knew I'd never see you again

###

Behind the trailer a thousand miles away

The Dragon knows not where I am today

And that's supposed to be enough for me

To shed the past and now be free

###

But every song about grief and bones

Feels to me like it is your own.

Or the grandchild the Dragon slayed,

And now I'm supposed to be okay?

  
  


**Motherless**

^^^

All of your gaslighting

Has scorched my brain

When I rise in the morning

My very skin is in pain

Screaming out loud, I’m not your playtoy

And never will be again.

^^^  
  
  


**The Homelanders**

$$$

The lilt of my voice

They shaped it like clay

How do you run

From your own DNA

When the sky darkens

Forest smoke in your eyes

Normality flees

It’s a paper disguise

$$$

My hands are not clean

They fractured my mind

No one can leave

An empire behind

I could cross a border

Or even a sea

I’d still open my mouth

And they’d pour out of me.

$$$

The accent, the words,

The fears and the shame

They don’t go away 

With the change of a name

How do you hide

As the flag is unfurled?

The monsters who made you

Are burning the world.

  
  
  


**Erica**

```

A yellow, noxious fog

The kind that burns your skin

Peels the bark from logs

And makes the rot set in.

```

Toxic, poison fog

We breathed it every day.

Then bumped into one another…

And we began to play. 

```

We covered broken faces

As though in a masquerade.

We were joined by other dancers

And in time, I was saved.

```

I flew North and you flew East

We gasped, then breathed the air!

I still heard you from a distance

Until...you just weren’t there.

```

I sleep beneath a safe, bright sky.

Smell leaves, clean sand and sea. 

Yet my chest aches with the wishing

That you were here with me.

```  
  
  
  


**True North Traffic Stop**

+++

Hate priests and cops?  
#MeToo.

I feel a tremor

Starting to brew…

Chest tight, hands shake

Though this is routine

And a different country

I want to scream.

+++

The Canadian Mountie

Says, “Are you okay?”

“I’m from the States.”

That’s all I say.

“Well, we’re nice here.”

A ticket, a wave.

I pull over and wait 

For my heart to behave.

+++

It was in both our eyes

And his quiet nod.

The image of boots

And the faces they trod

The echo of bullets

And bloody fists.

Freedom in my homeland

Is my greatest wish.

  
  


**For Anne Druyan**

&&&

Anne, we are strangers, you and I

My life had just began

Around when Carl died.

&&&

Years ago I was hiking out among the trees

I began reading Carl's book

And started to be free

&&&

 _Demon Haunted World_ , that was where I'd been.

Trapped in superstitions even darker

Than the old dogmas of sin.

&&&

Strip away all titles, all the little games

The flim-flam artists I grew up with

I now spit their names

&&&

I know it is a _moral_ question when I say to you

Do you care whether or not

Your beliefs are true?

&&&

True, as in congruent with reality?

I finally know that those who don't

Have no place near me.

&&&

Reality is all we have. That's where the people are.

People like you and Carl

Who taught me to see the stars.

&&&  
  


**Bubba**

(((

Terror is a virus

Passed in stories, not blood.

John Grisham movies

Men in white hoods

What the parent fears

The child learns to.

His hair is blonde,

His eyes are blue.

(((

He drives a truck 

With a gun rack 

You think you're safe

If you're not black?

It's who you love

And what you say

Or if he finds you

In his way.

(((

**Memorials**

...

A rich man dies

His offspring fight each other

Then have an estate sale.

Turn assets into cash

And buy a boat.

...

An American dies

She is cremated under her dead name

Then her friends gather

Around her photo

And take what is left.

...

We picked up her son

Threw her music in our backpacks

Played her guitar

Carried her memory 

Into the future.

...

I gathered up

All of the good I had left undone..

And her spirit

Of revolution.

Braided them…

...

Into a scarf

To wrap around my head

Until the hour

I go into the furnace...

Cheap cremation.

  
  


**Authority**

^^^

"Daddy" is not

The empty husk

In a family photo

I didn't keep.

^^^

His head kept

So far down…

He might as well

Have been faceless.

^^^

Daddy is a cape

With stripes and stars

A warm smile 

A handshake.

^^^

"What a tragedy.

Let me keep you safe.

Our country is strong

United We Stand"

^^^

You clasp that hand

Go to sleep

Then wake up

In a house on fire.

^^^

Every day 

More bodies burn

Than he ever

Promised to avenge.

^^^  
  
  


**December 2020**

```

It's December 2020

And I'm driving through the snow

There's groceries to deliver

I have places to go…

```

There's gig work that needs doing

There's bills I gotta pay

The gas tank is getting lower…

Should have filled it yesterday.

```

It's December 2020

I am safe, and warm, and dry.

Between bagel and chicken…

3000 Americans die.

```

I am driving through the snow...

That is only in my mind.

And it's the sort of snowfall

That Auschwitz left behind.

```

It's December 2020

The ashes make no sound 

Corbin, Erica should have lived

I should be in the ground.

```

The rich, in ivory towers…

We will make them pay

Because nothing else will ever 

Make this snowfall go away.

```

**American Inauguration 2021**

$$$

I am an ant

Upon the hilt

Of a falling knife

$$$

It spins in air

I hang on,

Each day of my life.

$$$

Upon the screen

Men in black

And two ladies in blue…

$$$

On either side 

Of an ancient man

Who swears he will be true

$$$

Tomorrow

And tomorrow

The empire is a train.

$$$

With no brakes

And bloody rails

As such, it will remain.

$$$


End file.
